Monday, September 17, 2012

Cosmocking: October '12!

White cover! Zooey Deschanel! I don't know if her "quirkiness" is a marketing strategy or is the Real Her, but frankly, not having any personal relationship to her either way, I'm not bothered by that lack of knowledge! "Orgasm Guaranteed!" Because "this helps some people have orgasms so maybe it's worth a try for you" is just not how Cosmo rolls! "Secrets Even a Good Boyfriend Keeps From You!" Spoiler: they're all incredibly mundane white lies like "he thinks you do look fat in that dress," but boy, doesn't it look scandalous on the cover! "Feel Happier In 9 Seconds!" I did it in 2, but then I had to dig Cosmo back out of the bin so I could finish this post!

Girlfriend apartments are amazing. They smell nice, have the most comfortable beds, and are always clean.

The instant I read this, I got up and took a picture of my bedroom.

So, uh. Hi Internet. I didn't realize you were coming over. I would have straightened up.

(Okay, not exactly a woman, but raise your hand if you don't know a woman whose apartment makes mine look like a Better Homes and Gardens spread.)

The C-Spot: Yep, he has one too. It's the C-shaped outer edge of his ear, and it's supersensitive.

The N-Spot: It's the area right in the middle of the back of his neck.

The K-Spot: The skin behind his knees is thin and full of nerve endings.

The A-Spot: Your guy's ankles called, and they want some love too.

I hope they follow this up in the next issue with an article about "Does the N-spot really exist? Does it contain nerves? Or is it all a myth? Science is still debating!"

The Random Way He Decides if You're Dateable

By your dog. See, if you have a poodle, you're only good for a one-night stand, and if you have a chihuahua, you're "hot but flaky," but if you have a golden retriever, you're "the total package."

The article, sadly, does not go on to say that if you have a pet snake, you have hundreds of ribs and only need to eat every two weeks.

...wait, why does he need to look at your dog to know if you're hot? Can't he see you?

"If you're in the electrical section [of a Home Depot], ask him if he feels the sparks flying too. It sounds dumb, but guys love humor."

Most guys do love humor. That's why they're cringing right now.

[If "your man" doesn't cook:] You have to teach him--start by asking him to food shop. If he gets the wrong kind of cheese, don't make a big deal out of it, otherwise he'll curl into the fetal position and never go near the dairy aisle again (kidding... kind of). Once he finds out he can gather supplies for a meal, have him help with the food prep.

This is great advice for teaching a five- or six-year-old child to start helping out in the kitchen. It's a little disconcerting when the man in the image illustrating this article looks roughly thirty-five.

There's three main reasons men (or anyone) don't cook: Not caring what they eat, thinking someone else should cook for them, or not knowing how to cook. All three have different solutions and not one is "baby him along like you're trying to convince a timid puppy to go out in the snow."

Five: The number of times you should casually touch a guy you're into within 15 minutes. Men aren't always fluent in subtlety, so several pats on the arm, pecks on the cheek, and hands on the knee are necessary.

Well, touching someone who isn't your partner or close friend every three minutes is not subtle. Sort of creepily intrusive if the attraction isn't mutual but your touches have enough "plausible deniability" that they feel weird asking you to stop... but not subtle!

Of course, overcoming all this subtlety wouldn't be necessary in the first place if Cosmo gave advice on verbal flirting any more direct than "try changing the angle of your hips slightly in his direction."

Maybe you could ask this guy if he feels sparks flying too? And if he gets confused just ask him to go to a Home Depot electrical department with you. That's a great first date anyway.

By the time you're 32, your clitoris is four times larger than it was at puberty.

Far be it from me to dispute such an authoritative-sounding claim, but wouldn't that make it, like, four inches long by now? I'm pretty sure that didn't happen to me. I would have noticed.

(I feel weird needing a citation to prove something that is already proven in my pants, but here you go.)

Most 20somethings have sex 112 times a year, according to a study.

One of these days I'm going to offer Cosmo's editorial staff a free seminar on the use of the words "average," "median," "majority," and "plurality." I know they don't want to confuse readers with fancy math terms or whatever, but this is just embarrassing.

[On how to initiate butt-play:] Slowly massage his perineum (the tender spot between his balls and his butt). If he doesn't object, work your way back.

You know I'm going to say this is a consent fail, and it really is. Both because "not objecting" isn't consent and because consent to having your taint tickled is not consent to a finger up your bum.

But there's another problem here. One that ought to chill the bones even of people who think asking before buttfucking is unromantic Robot Lawyer nonsense. If you don't give your partner an unambiguous heads-up before going for his butthole, you don't give him the chance to say "whoa, not right now, I've got a massive poop on deck."

Reflect upon this.

Hit a used bookstore and grab a few big travel books. Having these pretty tomes stacked on your coffee table screams "world traveler."

I don't want to end this post on a non-consensual poop-smearing note, so I'll just say: buy books because you want to read them, goddammit. If you've traveled the world, you'll have more personal ways to show it off, and if you haven't, why not show off something you're actually proud of?

Life is too damn short to waste on looking cool. Don't waste a second or a penny that you could be spending on being cool.

95 comments:

i had to go to the hospital a couple months ago over my Achilles tendon, but now that Cosmo is here to redefine my anatomy for me i can say that i hurt my A-spot and it'll sound way sexier than it actually was

I'm just waiting for them to run out of letters and start borrowing from other alphabets, so we can argue about the relative merits of the Æ-spot versus the Γ-spot, or whether non-Scandinavians have an Ø-spot.

According to Wikipedia, you are "confident, social, and active," but "require a high level of attention," and you have another side of your personality that is highly intelligent and independent but somewhat prone to biting.

A symptom of my autism is that that "Men just can't always SEE the dirt and mess" generalization really is true about my brain. I often have to have it pointed out to me and then it can be difficult for me to process the steps required to clean it up right. It took me forever to realize this wasn't just me being horrible and disgusting and lazy.

Then again, you can do the whole Simon Baron Cohen thing, wave a wand and go, AUTISM BRAIN IS NOT LADY BRAIN on me, I guess.

Apparently there is Aspie Ladybrain, but it could be a result of socialisation. Aspie women tend to have slightly more social awareness than Aspie men. I think there are other differences, but that's the most obvious - and it's only a trend.

I have a similar problem where I can see the dirt and mess but OH GOD THE DIRT THE MESS OH GOD ITS EVERYWHERE WHERE DO I START OH GOD OH GOD. So Mum tidies my room.

I have that issue too. Even though intellectually I know it takes less than 2 hours to clean every floor and horizontal surface in my apartment...AAAAAH SO MUCH DIRT MAKE IT GO AWAY!!! THIS'LL TAKE WEEKS!

I have Dyspraxia Brain, which is pretty neutral emotionally about dirt (at least mine is), but helpless to take the organizational steps to control dirt.

Here's how I mentally organize myself to clean my kitchen:

"-buy cleaning solution or vinegar-find sponge-that was buy sponge, find vinegar, right?-go to store to buy sponge-where is store? uh oh-okay, found store. where is cleany things?-no, this is not cleany things. this is baking things-augh help-wait, why was I here? did I need a cleany thing? was I going to clean a thing? There are many things that clean and many things to clean with! I cannot buy them all! -despair-buy cake mix-go home-don't have eggs or butter, cannot make cake mix-oh well, not going back to store. will just have spoonful of dry cake mix for dessert-not bad actually"

This 100%. When the boyfriend and I moved in together we made a deal over cleanliness because he's the neat one and I just don't care. Most of the house is relatively neat and tidy but my studio space is mine and I get to be as messy as I want.

I am, as far as I can tell, totally neurotypical, but I rarely notice dirt unless it's massively obvious or starts to stink. And on top of that, I don't actually care about any mess other than the particularly nasty organic kind. My place is Dirty Sock Heaven. I'm pretty sure that the Gender Police are going to come along and take away my permission to be female any day now.

Female autistic here, and yeah, between that and ADHD I really do not notice when things are a mess. Or I'll notice them and then immediately get distracted by something else. And the longer something is a mess the less I can notice it. So my living quarters are pretty much never clean.

Apartments: I don't even HAVE an apartment. I have a room. And a twin bed on the cheapest IKEA frame available. Most of the room is made of my ghetto vanity, a giant white fabric clothes storage unit, a drawing desk, and 2 grey folding tables measuring 48x24 inches EACH.

Cooking: I gave myself food poisoning last time I cooked. Meanwhile, one guy I'm seeing made me a meal he only dared put in front of me after 3 or 4 practice goes by himself. [It was delicious.]

Stupid Books: Meanwhile, the other guy I'm seeing is a big world traveler. I have made it clear that my poor little passport is empty. And he's been drilling me on what countries I most want to see.

Man does not want to conversate with Woman. If Man wants to conversate, he hangs with his guy friends, and they talk about tits. Such conversation as he engages in with Woman is about how awesome he is, and how sexy she is.

What if I don't own a pet? Is it based on what dog I find adorable? What if I want a tarantula instead?

There is no way I can figure doing the touching thing that isn't hilariously awkward. I mean, I don't touch people within fifteen minutes of meeting them *ever*. And certainly not without permission!

Being your own awesome self is always way awesomer than being the Universal Idea of Awesome That Everyone Agrees On Always. Partially because the second doesn't actually exist. (Except for the Mythbusters and Richard Feynman.)

Don't worry: everyone lives in a completely different universe to Cosmo.

I blame laziness more than anything else. I'm pretty sure they've been recycling the same articles since 1967 when just saying the words "blow job" made it forward-thinking and talking about "your man" was still vaguely relevant for most women. I mean… maybe if you were Sally Rural-Texas and you didn't feel comfortable asking your friends about the best ways to "do it" with your boyfriend Tim Squarejaw. MAYBE.

I'm a dude. With a clean apartment.

Girls are DEFINITELY messier than guys on the whole. I think the thing is that women tend to see something and want to fix it then and there, whether it's a dirty counter or an email that needs to be responded to. For men, it's preferable to leave stuff to the side and then get all our little jobs out of the way at once. It's the same with cooking. I prefer to shop once a week, freeze my meat, cook my meals all at once and leave them in tupperware for later. If not that, mac and cheese with green salad is a good staple. When people come over though, I'm more than able to make something fancy because then it's a 'task'.

If our brains work differently, that's what I notice. My sister will wash A mug. I'll put all my dishes in the sink and spend half an hour doing them.

And I have never ONCE been confused by a grocery store. I mean… how is that even possible? When I buy my parmesan I request to see it cut so I can check the label on the block for authenticity. Call me a snob for that, sure, but don't call me a girl!

Oddly enough, my husband and I (I'm female) have the exact opposite problem. I am, in fact, way messier than him, but he is the put-away-everything-the-minute-you-use-it one and I am definitely the let-it-pile-up-then-fix-it-in-one-large-swoop one.

*Entirely* off-topic (well... pretty much), but I just had to squee at you for having a Tibbie. :) My mum bought 3 young adults when I was about a young teen, and we've bred and raised them for the past, er, 18 years or so. Wonderful dogs, aren't they? Sadly, only one of our pack is still with us - the 3 original adults and many of their offspring that we raised have all passed over the years. :(

So few people are familiar with the breed, I just got ridiculously giddy upon reading this. :) Don't mind me, please...

Wait, I just saw the "What your breasts need most at night". WTF? Do breasts have special needs at night? WHAT? I just go to sleep and they have to just lie there until I wake up again. Will that cause them to fall off?

Okay, not my problem since my boobs honestly look the same at 35 as they did when I was 12. No cleavage=no cleavage wrinkles either. But if sleeping on your side causes wrinkles in the cleavage... If you lie on your back, with big boobs, wouldn't they fall to each side? And wouldn't this position, by that same logic, cause wrinkles towards your armpit?

I remember I read once in some other lady mag that one shouldn't whistle, because that causes wrinkles around the mouth, and one should always sleep on one's back, otherwise one's face might wrinkle up against the pillow. Even setting aside the terrible sadness of just focusing on how not to get wrinkles all day and all night - I seriously doubt that these claims are based on scientific studies. I seriously doubt some researchers have examined, say, the level of cleavage wrinkle on ladies who sleep in different positions, and then come to these conclusions.

Maybe someone at Cosmo has been reading 'What to Expect when you're expecting'?? The one and only time I slept with a bra on was when I was pregnant, because DAMN. THEY. HURT. There I go again expecting logic from Cosmo....

There's another reason why I don't cook: Social Anxiety. I adore cooking, when I'm at home with my parents I even make pasta myself and bake bread but sometimes during semester I am too anxious to going shopping so chocolate has to do. :-(

The dog gets jealous sometimes, though, and gets into one or both laps to get us to stop cuddling on the couch and start paying attention to him. I call him Mommy's Little Attention Whore for that reason.

I don't know what the ratio of powerful 40-somethings to the entire population of early-20s women is, but it's certainly pretty high. So if we get Categorical Imperative with this, every powerful 40-something should be shtupping, like, 500 young women at once. Add in the statistic that each 20-something has sex 112 times a year, and I can't see how this guy's going to get any work done at all.

I did some thinkings and I'm pretty sure I've reverse-engineered the logic here.

112 is almost exactly every three days.

The author saw a survey that asked "Do you have sex: every week, every three days, every day, etc.", where the most common response was "every three days." And they just divided 365/3 to get a more intriguing number.

So, via Cosmo Math, we go from "a plurality of survey respondents in their 20s said they have sex every three days" to "most 20somethings have sex 112 times a year."

There's three main reasons men (or anyone) don't cook: Not caring what they eat, thinking someone else should cook for them, or not knowing how to cook. All three have different solutions and not one is "baby him along like you're trying to convince a timid puppy to go out in the snow."That kinda is broadly the right approach to teaching someone how to cook. Not the attitude, obviously, but getting hung up about the exact right ingredients is bound to be discouraging to would-be home cooks of all genders.

Though eventually anyone with a more than functional interest in cooking will pick that up on their own.

(Anent which, if Man does get the wrong kind of cheese, is Woman supposed to go out and get the right kind of cheese, or use it anyway? I can see the latter going, depending on how wrong we're talking, somewhere between slightly and badly wrong.)

Yes! I've taught beginning cooks, beginning English speakers, and beginning bike-commuters and you simply can't point out every single mistake someone makes early in the process, or they'll get discouraged and not come back.

I agree with not getting judgmental on him, but I thought the "first, let him sniff it, then let him get one paw wet..." approach was kind of condescending and overly-maternal.

If it was a knowledge deficit problem, I'd offer to teach him to cook his (or my...) favorite dishes, by making a "cook together date", sending him out with a grocery list to prep, and make the actual date into something fun and teamworky.

If it was a "don't care what I eat" problem, I'd pretty much just talk over with him that I do care, so even if he's happy eating junk, bringing home good food is a way of showing he cares about me.

If, on the other hand, I just wanted him to share in the food responsibilities instead of expecting me to do it all, I'd work out a schedule with him--XYZ days are "you are responsible for food" days, and you can bring me takeout or cook it yourself, I don't care, so long as you understand food is your problem those days.

...Of course, this is all set in the alternate universe where I know how to cook and don't live on Cup Noodles and Pop-Tarts.

The 1992 NHSLS collected this data on frequency of sex: http://web.mit.edu/nathanw/work/nhsls/frequency-of-sex

The options are "Not at all", "A few times a year", "A few times a month", "2-3 times a week", and "4+ times a week". For men in the 25-29 age range, "2-3 times a week" has a plurality; for women in that range, "a few times a month" is slightly ahead.

I've no idea if this is the data they used, but I'm sure you're right that whatever it was, they're butchering the details of the numbers pretty badly.

I actually had to look away and facepalm. Honestly, that whole quote was... I mean, christ. People get paid for this?

That whole "15 minutes" thing is creepy as hell. If anyone comes up and starts rubbing herself all over me within minutes of our first meeting, I'm not going to think "golly, she must like me". I'm going to think she's either batshit insane or just had a catastrophic break-up and needs a friend to take her home before she does something she'll regret.

CONCLUSIONS: It is possible to obtain useful clitoral measurements in the office setting.

'Most 20 somethings have sex 112 times a year, according to a study.' I've had sex exactly once so far this year, and it's September. Also the prospects for adding to that number aren't good. Cheers Cosmo! XDI bet you are right on with your theory of how they figured out this bullshit number, Cliff!

Also, why are they assuming a man who can't cook also can't grocery shop?

Lonely mushroom: He probably eats out all the damn time. My boyfriend does that. His mother and I are trying to talk him into bringing Tupperware with him when he goes because of all the Styrofoam takeout containers.

Mori: You think so now, but I have had a vision of the future, and let me tell you, you're going to make that 112 number. Unfortunately, you don't start until about December 15th, and you don't get much else done in those last two weeks of the year. Also, unless you set an alarm, you'll fall asleep about 5 minutes before midnight and miss the New Year.

And that hike you've been thinking about on the 3rd of January? Just forget about it now. You don't do much walking in January. ;)

Oh god oh god oh god, can you please Cosmock the new 50 Shades of Grey Magazine? 'Fifty Shades Of American Women Who Love The Book And Live The Life'.

It's described as 'Cosmo on steroids'. Headlines include "Real-life Anastasia's tell all" "Sex Whisperer: I use my body to fix broken men like Christian Grey" and "Release your Inner Goddess: 80 pages of jump-starting sex secrets". Also contains a survey of firemen and a quiz to find out which shade of grey you are.

I can't wait until the day when women stop being the ethereal being "Women" and start just just being "people who identify as female". "Women" don't poop, pee, fart, make loud noises, have messy apartments, sweat, have pimples or ingrown hairs, throw out their bloody pads in the trash and then forget to empty it for a few days...Being a "Women" results in every aspect of you being sexualized almost, and that by actively being a human being that I somehow feel like I need to be twice as gross or something just to emphasize the fact that I'm not like other "Women". Like, can't I just be myself without risking damaging my womanly allure? Of course I want to feel attractive to the opposite sex (being that I'm hetero) but I feel like this is a lose-lose situation. I'm going to have to poop eventually...

Well, another reason not to cook...Between ADHD and minor dyspraxia I pretty much can't. Dyspraxia makes it hard to use utensils and knives--especially knives and other sharp things because it's so easy to injure myself, so I have to go super slow and be super careful. ADHD makes it hard to count out amounts and remember ingredients I've used, to remember to do things without timers, and not to get distracted. Let me tell you, the number of times I haven't put enough flour in a cookie recipe, or put water on the stove to boil and forgotten about it until it's almost completely boiled off...So I pretty much survive on ham sandwiches, spaghetti, and frozen pizzas.

Regarding consent: I just had lunch with a bunch of male colleagues. Somehow we started discussing sexual violence, and I mentioned a big debate some while ago in Sweden about having a consent law regarding rape. Nowadays, it doesn't legally count as rape if the victim goes passive or into "frozen fright" and no explicit threat has been made. So lots of feminists want to change the law, so that it will be considered rape if the victim hadn't shown somehow that zie was consenting.

All my male colleagues had completely missed out on this debate, so I had to explain a) what it means to have a "consent law" regarding rape, and b) why so many people are explicitly against this. Since when feminists suggest this kind of legizlation, there are loads and loads of guys who go "WHAT? Will sex required a SIGNED CONTRACT? How could you otherwise know if a woman consents or not? IT'S SO BLOODY DIFFICULT TO KNOW IF SOMEBODY REALLY WANTS TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU OR NOT!"

Well, all my colleagues thought it was unbelievably ridiculous that there are guys out there who actually thinks it's terribly difficult to know if a woman really wants to have sex with you or not. They were like - What? What do they mean? Like, do they ask if she wanna have sex, and thinks she says "okay", so they charge ahead, and later they're like "Perhaps she didn't say 'okay' but 'no'"? [okay rhymes with no in Swedish]- Maybe they don't ask, maybe they sort of just stare at women they meet and then they're like "she LOOKS like she wanna have sex with me!" and just grabs her and...So, well, everyone's coming up with different scenarios featuring some idiot man who finds it difficult to know whether a woman really wants to have sex with him or not, and keep laughing at the idea as if it's THE MOST STUPID IDEA EVER that this would be difficult to know.

Hi Cliff, I don't know if this is the place to post this, but here goes!

I read your blog all the time, and I'm always learning something new or discovering other perspectives. I also read Oglaf (a mock-porn webcomic), and this is the latest strip (NSFW, obvs):

http://www.oglaf.com/submission/

I just wondered if you had any thoughts on it (I personally found it a hilarious exposé of some people's attitudes to kink), and if you have a post (or would write one!) on the use of kink in the non-kink community...

What is it with these covers? The more I look at her, the less plausible she looks: there is too much of her between the bosom and the chin, and also she has more cleavage above the neckline than breasts below it. Bizarre! (Note: this is not a comment on how the real-life person looks. I am positive this has been Photoshopped to death. But who decided that the readership wants/needs to see necks like a camel?)

Girlfriend apartments are amazing. They smell nice, have the most comfortable beds, and are always clean.

Hahahahahahahahaha.

Things currently located just on my desk, without even getting into the rest of the bedroom: a keyboard, a mouse, a mousepad, a monitor, a coaster, a tag off a bra I bought something like two months ago, a pair of nail clippers, an additional pair of nail clippers (why do I have two? damned if I know), two empty bowls, two empty glasses, an empty mug, a used napkin, an unused napkin, a piece of Band-aid wrapper, a salt shaker, an oven mitt (why? I have no idea), the packaging from a tube of Chapstick, two hair scrunchies, four empty soda cans, a bottle of multivitamins, a stapler, a container of floss, a random lid from something, a tag from some unidentified object that cost $6.99, a coupon for Indian food, a cell phone, a cell phone case, a granola bar wrapper, a memory card, a VGA cable adapter, a bottle of nail polish remover, a quarter, a torn piece of paper with "DON'T FORGET SOCKS" written on it, a cough drop, and a lot of dust and dead bugs behind the monitor because I always forget to dust there.

(Also, I finally saved up and splurged on a non-shitty mattress last winter, but in the five years before that, my "most comfortable beds" were either an air mattress on the floor or a horrible old mattress my parents were going to throw out because it literally had pieces of mattress spring sticking out of it, covered in a sleeping bag to make it bearable. Apparently girlfriends are all reasonably wealthy and definitely not dirt-poor students who have no money to buy a bed.)

I've given birth a couple times, and I can't say I've noticed any increase in size, but hey, what's a millimeter here or there? It's what you do with it that counts :-) And anyway, y'all know most of the clitoral tissue is hidden, right? From Our Bodies, Ourselves:

Extending from the hood up to the pubis symphysis (the joint), you can now feel a hardish, rubbery, movable cord right under the skin. It is sometimes sexually arousing if touched. This is the shaft of the clitoris. It is connected to the bone by a suspensory ligament. You cannot feel this ligament or the next few organs described, but they are all important in sexual arousal and orgasm.

At the point where you no longer feel the shaft of the clitoris, it divides into two parts, spreading out like a wishbone but at a much wider angle, to form the crura or legs (singular: crus), the erectile tissue that attaches to the pelvic bones. The crura of the clitoris are about three inches long. Starting from where the shaft and crura meet, and continuing down along the sides of the vestibule, are two bundles of erectile tissue called the bulbs of the vestibule. These, along with the whole clitoris and an extensive system of connecting veins and muscles throughout the pelvis, become firm and filled with blood during sexual arousal. This process is called pelvic congestion. Some pelvic congestion can occur during the menstrual cycle right before your period comes. Both the crura of the clitoris and the bulbs of the vestibule are wrapped in muscle tissue. This muscle helps to create tension and fullness during arousal and contracts during orgasm, playing an important role in the involuntary spasms felt at that time.

Somehow I forgot to keep track with your cosmocking updates. Kind of glad, in a way; gotta love that backlog.

I'd forgotten how much Cosmo pushed the fact that human beings are All The Same and Like Exactly The Same Things. Next time I accidentally brush my guy's ankle and he bursts into fits of agonised giggles, I'll tell him to shut the hell up because Cosmo said he likes it.